[Ilya]

None of them had come back.

Adela could hear a few footsteps and the occasional sob coming from the hall, but none of the cooks had come back into the kitchen. She'd lost her feet at some point, and so sat in the quiet, only the kitchen smells and the flagstone floor for company, just as she'd wanted to before the feast. After a time, questions began to pick at her mind. Maybe she should've gone back, maybe she should start cleaning, maybe everyone else had left for a reason. What was being done, after all? Why, maybe there was another attack! Maybe they were surrounding the colony, and all the dwarves with sense had already made their escape. Maybe the lords had fought among their own and there were none now left to lead. Adela screwed her eyes shut and rocked back, hitting her head on a table leg. She got up.

There were too many maybes and whitherfores and might have beens just at the moment. Suddenly, the sadness had drained away and left only a pain in her head and frustraition, which in the absence of any others Adela directed at herself as began to do the only sensible thing left to do - her work. So Balin had been slain! A dwarf and a warrior, there were worse ways to die! Orcs had attacked them! Well, strange thing, that, for orcs throughout time have been a peaceful lot, to dwarves in especial! An attack was hardly to be wondered at, even the Iron Hills, so why should the colony have fared any differently?

When the jug's broken, there's no repairing it with the milk on the floor, Adela reasoned, putting the last of the oven fires out. Most of the pies she'd left in had burnt, for she'd run into the hall at the sound of the party's return, and came not to herself in time to rescue them. One, though, the last red-current, baked just fine, and this one she put aside for when the cleaning was done. The heavy smell, of food both cooked and overcooked, was almost gone now, the kitchens once again airy, cool, and still.

Adela felt a chill jerk her spine as she plunged her hands in a barrel of soapy water. The colony would have a leader again, not as experienced as Lord Balin had been, but had not the great Oakenshield perished just as he came into his rule? And now Dain was undoubted King under the Mountain. There were several pretentious, well-meaning longbeards capable of carrying the weight at the test. They'd secure the colony and hunker down for the fight, however long. Maybe the raiding party was the token handful of the black foe still left in these halls, withered and weak, left with nothing but to search for wandering ghosts in the great grieving emptiness of Khazad Dum. Maybe.

Bending over the barrel, Adela glanced down and saw a taut face and raw eyes shivering as another chill ripped through her shoulders and skated around her neck.The dwarf she knew, the one of sense and quiet and a bit of stolen laughter, not to mention pie, looked very different in grief. Very different indeed. She closed her eyes and in breathed deep the smell of soap and wood smoke. This would pass. The thing to do was get home before anyone --

"Excuse me, but is Vyra here?"

Adela whipped around, immediately embarrassed for being so startled, and for snatching a spoon when she turned. She tossed it into the barrel, all the more aggravated, for it'd been clean, and ducked a curtsy before she had time to study the dwarf who'd spoken. Stout, an open face, grey-eyed...it was the woman mason, wasn't it?

"Na, ma'am, it's only me here now. I haven't seen Vyra since, well, since the festivities began," Adela smiled but couldn't hold onto it for long. "Is there aught I can do for you?"